


Five Times Minato Ate Tempura

by anstaar



Series: Unknown Relations [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: 5 Things, AU, Canonical Character Death, F/M, back story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-22
Updated: 2012-08-22
Packaged: 2017-11-12 16:37:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/493404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anstaar/pseuds/anstaar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taste memory is very strong</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Minato Ate Tempura

**One  
**  
Kaoru asked the woman, with a voice that quavered ever-so-slightly, what she's selling. She confided in a small whisper that they'd never seen anything like the food before. Minato widened his eyes, per previous orders, and Yasu even managed to smile in vaguely the right direction. The woman rolled her eyes and muttered about beggars and thieves and all the things that were wrong with children today, but she handed over two sticks. The tempura burned his mouth but, as they race down the street, hunger temporarily assuaged, he was sure that it was the most delicious food in the world.   
  
(It was a long time till he saw his sibling again. When they do meet again they are forever separated by time and new loyalties and his mouth burned but he still felt empty)  
  
 **Two  
**  
After their first mission, Jiraiya brought them out to lunch at a restaurant that he swore had the best karaage-fried chicken in the whole of Konoha, along with the prettiest waitresses they would find. He was the only one who ordered the chicken. Fugaku got ramen because he had been warned about the horrors the food contained from his brother at least a hundred times. His first slurp alerted him to how hot the bowl was and he accidently dropped it, splashing Hiashi (who had been loudly complaining about the dinginess of the restaurant and the cheapness of the food since they entered) and his rice. Minato sat back and ate his tempura with a slight smile. Sometimes he thought they were assigned to three men cells purely for the comedic situations that were sure to ensue.    
  
(Jiraiya ran away, Fugaku grew cold and Hiashi lost what sense of humor they had teased him into gaining. The restaurant went out of business long before Minato realized he wanted his team to go there again)  
  
 **Three  
**  
Two weeks after he had helped bring Uzumaki Kushina back to Konoha he found her standing in the hallway outside his door. Hesitant wasn't a word readily associated with Kushina. She tended to run into, or through, thing with little forethought and a lot of violence. Most of the time, when Kushina and Minato happened to run into each other he would stand quietly as she yelled at him, continuing her side of the argument she seemed to believe they were having about whether or no they could achieve their dreams. Never before had she shown up at his apartment with a bag of fresh, if slightly squished, tempura. "I heard you like them," she muttered and he smiled and he invited her in. They sat his table ("you're so girly," Kushina said, with an eye roll for his vase of carefully arranged flowers) sharing the tempura and stories and he thought that this was the best meal he had ever had.  
  
(Kushina lay dead and he stood with their child cradled in his arms preparing to sacrifice them both for the village in the way she had always accused him of wanting to and he tried to think of the name of the flowers she had always liked despite her frequent protests to the contrary)  
  
 **Four**  
  
Minato was seventeen and had no idea what to do with a traumatized six year old. He had sat the boy down on his couch three hours ago and the kid had yet to move. He wished that Kushina was there. She would say something loud and cheerful and completely inappropriate under the circumstances. He even (almost) wished that his team was there. They would be arrogant and perverted and completely the wrong thing to expose his new student to. Instead it was just him, Kakashi and a plate full of quickly congealing tempura that he had gotten because he had no idea what Kakashi might want to eat. Finally, the boy reached out and took a piece. Minato immediately followed suit. It was cold and the vegetables had lost their crispness but it was the first sign, however slight, of life in his charge so it tasted like a victory.   
  
(Kakashi was fourteen and just as traumatized as he had been at five. Minato wondered if he had ever helped the boy at all, sometimes it seemed that all he had done was teach him how to kill off whatever was left of who he could have been, and now he was leaving him alone with no one left to even swing by his apartment on a bad day)   
  
 **Five**  
  
Three days before Kushina was due to give birth ( _three days until he gave up his life to give his son the only advantage he can to face the dangerous future stretching ahead of them all_ ) he bought some tempura on his way to the Hokage tower. He didn't have any specific reason in mind. He wasn't in a rush and he was a bit hungry and he liked tempura so he did something impulsive ( _Kushina always told him to try doing something impulse, sometime when he_  wasn't _on a mission_ ). The owner offered it to him for free, but then, Minato was known for always paying ( _soon no one would remember that he always expected favor in exchange for picking up the bill_ ). Konoha had managed to almost completely disentangle itself from the war and today he could make the last modifications to Kushina's new seal. Rarely had he felt this happy. 


End file.
